Different formats for different brains

Why I'm adding audio content to Digital Hope

Photo by Konstantin Dyadyun on Unsplash

For three years, I investigated and reported on a criminal case, always envisioning a book as the final product. My co-creator, an avid podcast fan, however, strongly believed that format was a more fitting vehicle for the story we wanted to tell. He kept trying to get me to listen to podcast samples, and I’d stubbornly say, “They just don’t work for me.”

Because they truly don’t.

I don't enjoy the process of absorbing information via audio. I learn things by reading, not by listening. If listening is my only option, I learn by writing down what I’m hearing. For me, the act of writing solidifies the information in my mind, and I rarely have to go back to my notes to remember the bulk of what I wrote.

In law school, unless the professor was big on classroom interaction, I skipped most lectures and read everything assigned in the syllabus. Every. Single. Word. I had a friend who did the opposite: never read anything, but faithfully sat through every lecture. We both earned good grades, so embracing our own learning styles worked well for us. Whenever we took the same class we’d swap our notes, giving us the benefit of a different approach that reinforced or added to what we’d already learned our own way.

I’m thankful TikTok’s auto-caption function, designed to create an inclusive app environment for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, has normalized subtitles in all short form videos. I hate watching videos to learn something, but I happily read captions. Through a Mastodon conversation thread, I learned I definitely wasn’t alone. Plenty of people said audio- or video-only content was a dealbreaker for them.

One learning style does not fit all. Different brains thrive with different inputs.

I know this not only from my experience as a learner, but as a teacher as well. A few years ago, I taught a university class on professional development and communication. After being asked by several students if they had to buy the textbook, I realized none of them wanted to read it. I asked how they preferred to learn and a majority said “by watching videos.” I challenged them to help me find videos on the course topics and we co-created a video version of the syllabus. For the most part, it worked beautifully. They engaged more with the concepts and were more interested in the class as a whole because they were learning in the way that worked best for them.

With in-person transmission of information, I’m pretty good about incorporating a variety of methods. I know that if I want people to pay attention to what I’m trying to convey, I have to care about the ways they prefer to be communicated with. But it’s taken me a long time (over a decade!) to embrace creating audio and/or video content — instead of just written content — of my own.

But by only creating content in the forms I prefer, I’ve unintentionally left out people who prefer to absorb content in a different way. Like my true crime-ish podcast co-creator (yes, he prevailed and we made a podcast!), who learns by listening to downloads while cleaning his Airbnb. Or a friend who consumes audio content during long drives. Or my son, who aborbs information by having text read to him at 3x to 4x the speed of standard speech. (As I was working on this, he came upstairs to complain that the video course he was watching couldn’t go any faster than 2x.)

I don't want my preference to limit somebody else’s ability to access content — and our digital world makes it easier to provide content in a variety of formats than ever before. It just takes a bit of thought and effort until inclusionary practices become second nature. So this week I launched an audio version of my content for those who prefer to listen instead of read. I’m including transcripts with each audio post, not only for people who prefer to read, but because audio-only content is inaccessible for some. (I’m also working on transcripts for my true crime-ish podcast.)

Hopefully, I’ll soon have audio versions of my books Digital Kindness and Digital Grace available too!

Are you more of a reader or a listener? What other considerations make content more accessible for you? I’d love to hear what you think about the audio-first format — and about whether you’d like me to start including audio with text-first posts (like this one) as well.

Thanks for reading (and listening)!